The invention relates to the technical field of the reproduction and manufacture of individuals, particularly in the form of busts and/or of statuettes.
It is known to produce statuettes, busts, cartoon figures and sculptures of various people who are to a greater or lesser extent known and/or famous in various environments, both sporting and cultural, political, etc. The shape of the face and the morphological volume of the person to be reproduced can be obtained from photographs or drawings or from the person himself. In general, the methods used, which are of an essentially small-scale manual nature, provide merely the xe2x80x9cspiritxe2x80x9d of the person and his characteristic features, but are in no way capable of producing a three-dimensional image corresponding exactly to the person in terms of both proportions and features.
In other words, the techniques of reproducing a person in three dimensions do not make it possible to reconstruct a perfectly true and authentic image of the person in the same way as a photograph is capable of doing where a reproduction in two dimensions is concerned. It is also apparent that most statuettes or busts of persons are of uniform color. When coloring is desired, it is necessary to resort to entirely manual methods which, at most, can never correspond to the texture and color of the skin.
The teaching of Patent EP-A-0244636 discloses a solution suitable for the manufacture of dolls or of similar articles. This document does not seek to achieve a photographic resemblance of an individual. In this prior art, the support receiving an image of the cut-off face is not subjected to an operation capable of allowing it to match perfectly the recessed and relief shapes of a morphometric volume.
Moreover, the prior document makes use of photographs and then of the numbering of these photographs in two independent operations in order to obtain a system for evaluating the gray levels. As will be mentioned in the rest of the description, according to the invention the impression is not transposed directly onto the support formed by the morphological volume, that is to say a volumetric body, but onto a virtual cylinder, the algorithms of which have taken into account the rheology of the material of the impression support.
In the document U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,305, the aim is to make a mask, not reproduce a support, and to provide an anamorphosed image of a previously stored photograph. Here too, in this prior patent, only the front face is produced, not the entire volume of an individual""s head.
The set object of the invention is to overcome these disadvantages simply, reliably, effectively and economically.
The problem which the invention proposes to solve is to produce, in particular, busts or statuettes of individuals, its aim being to provide a three-dimensional reproduction of these persons, whilst at the same time preserving the suitability of several parameters, specifically essentially:
the volume, which must have the greatest possible fidelity in its proportions and in its features;
the image, which must have the greatest possible photographic realism;
the color, which must be authentic;
the spirit, which must depict the character and temperament of the person.
In other words, the problem which the invention proposes to solve is to provide a three-dimensional reproduction of a person, particularly of his face, which corresponds to his photographic image, and to the level of volume, morphology, color, etc.
In order to solve such a problem, a method has been designed and developed for manufacturing and reproducing at least part of an individual or of an object, whereby:
a set of measurements is produced simultaneously, in order to obtain numerical data in the form of a 3D file, of a color texture of the 3D file and of 2D plane color photographs of the individual or of the object;
this data acquisition set is repeated over a plurality of predefined zones, so as to cover the 360xc2x0 of the individual (or of the object), in order to lay said data onto a modeled morphometric volume;
the image obtained is anamorphosed as a function of the physical transformation characteristics of the modeled volume;
the anamorphosed image is applied to a support made of shrinkable material;
the shrinkable support is shaped in order to obtain a sleeve;
a volumetric body corresponding to the digitized model of the individual is produced;
the sleeve is applied to the relevant part of the individual""s body;
the sleeve is subjected to an operation capable of allowing it to match perfectly the recessed and/or relief shapes of the volumetric body.
Bearing in mind the basic characteristics of the invention, the method may be described as follows.
With the aid of a scanner coupled to a CCD camera and a digital photographic instrument, a set of measurements is produced simultaneously, so as to obtain the following numerical data:
3D file
color texture of the 3D file
2D plane color photographs of the individual.
This numerical data acquisition set is repeated over a plurality of predefined zones, so as to cover the 360xc2x0 of the individual, in particular the head. Each digitized set represents one sector of the 360xc2x0 of the individual.
For processing the 3D numerical data, the fusion of the digitized 3D sectors is carried out, in order to obtain the virtual orbicular volume of the subject. The fusion of the 3D files gives rise to the fusion of the texture associated with said file.
For processing the 2D photographic numerical data by means of specific software, orbicular laying of the 2D photographic sectors onto the virtual 3D volume is carried out by the exact superposition of the photographs on the texture of this file.
A texture of photographic quality in terms of details and of colors of the individual is thus obtained.
For anamorphosis as such, specific software is used to reenter the characteristics of the support made of shrinkable material, which will subsequently be used for manufacturing the physical photographic skin, and also the technical parameters for its transformation, so that a virtual cylinder can be generated for the algorithms corresponding to the rheology of this material.
The cylinder is subsequently positioned virtually around the virtual individual (3D file with photographic texture).
Photographic projection onto the virtual support is then carried out.
The result of this is that the 3D data of the photographic texture are transposed in the form of anamorphosed 2D data onto the virtual cylinder, so as to obtain an anamorphosed virtual 360xc2x0 pan of the individual.
The virtual cylinder is developed in order to obtain the anamorphosed flat photographic image of the subject over 360xc2x0. This image corresponds to the digital impression file which will subsequently be used in order to produce the photographic impression on a support made of shrinkable material.
The physical production of the morphometric volume is obtained by any known means, using, for example, suitable software, in order to calculate, from the 3D digital file, the path of a tool which will control in four axes the production of an imprint of a mold on a machining center.
After the numerical data have been acquired and processed, the photographic skin is produced in the following way:
On the basis of the digital impression file, printing is carried out onto the support made of shrinkable material, for example in the form of a polymeric film.
The printed film is shaped in the form of a cylindrical sleeve corresponding to the virtual cylinder.
The shrinkable cylindrical sleeve is positioned accurately according to the physical and morphometric volume.
The shrinkage of the sleeve is carried out, the latter matching the recessed and/or relief shapes of the morphometric physical volume.
So that the film perfectly matches the morphometric volume, the so-called symbiosing operation is carried out, which involves shaping the film of the sleeve conformally to the volume and putting it into perfect symbiosis with the latter.